In an article about female jihadis in the International Business Times [IBT], Yasmin Alibhai-Brown equates Israelis who fought to defend Israel with Palestinian terrorists – who she merely describes as “female fighters.” She writes:
The unending Palestinian struggle has produced female fighters. Leila Khaled, for example, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP], hijacked four planes in the stormy late sixties. In her last attempt in 1970, the plane was forced to land in Heathrow. Khaled was holding two hand grenades. She was held in Ealing police station, five minutes away from where I live. They sent her back. Khaled is still alive and involved in the struggle for a Palestinian state.
The PFLP is an internationally recognized terror organization responsible for dozens of attacks against Israelis over the decades, including suicide bombings, rocket attacks, shootings, and in 2014, the barbaric murder of five Jewish worshippers in a synagogue in Jerusalem.
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Last year in a speech she made in Germany, Khaled called for an intifada, referred to terrorists and mass murderers as heroes and martyrs, and said “negotiations will be held only with knives and weapons. That is what the Palestinian people are like.” She was a guest of honor for the extremist BDS movement in South Africa, which masquerades as a human rights group but denies Israel’s legitimacy – and actually promoted her as both a plane hijacker and “freedom fighter.” She recently began a hunger strike in solidarity with imprisoned Palestinian terrorists and murderers who have been on a hunger strike for the past few weeks.
Khaled is not involved in the struggle for a Palestinian state; she is encouraging the murder of innocent Israelis and the destruction of the Jewish state.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyEmKEYUoU8
For Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, it is not enough to whitewash Palestinian terrorism against civilians; she must delegitimize Israeli defense against that terrorism by equating the two. She immediately follows her paragraph on Palestinians by saying:
Haganah was the Zionist militant armed organisation active in the British Mandate of Palestine until the late early forties. Twenty percent of their fighters were women.
HonestReporting has documented many examples of Alibhai-Brown’s biases and extreme views, including:
- Comparing Israeli actions to Jihadism as well as Nazism, dismissing Israeli self-defense as “vicious and misdirected”
- Claiming that Israel is “more wicked and dangerous” than Hamas
- Distorting Israeli history
- Accusing Israel of apartheid
So it is no wonder that she disparages the Israeli Haganah, which was founded in 1920 to protect the lives of Jews in Israel against attacks by Arabs, as they realized they could not depend on British forces. Alibhai-Brown, referring to female fighters in general explains “Such females were driven – rightly or wrongly – by burning political passions.” Except that the Haganah was not a political organization; its sole purpose was to save Jewish lives. The Haganah, once Israel was declared a state, became the official Israeli Defense Forces, which to this day continues its mission:
To defend the existence, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the state of Israel. To protect the inhabitants of Israel and to combat all forms of terrorism which threaten the daily life.
There is of course a clear difference between those who target innocent civilians in attacks, and those who defend the civilians; between Palestinian terrorists and their Israeli targets. Unless you are Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.
Please let the IBT know your concerns about Alibhai-Brown misleading readers with her biased journalism – [email protected]
Featured image: Edgardo W. Olivera
